Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven

(Mutter Küsters fahrt zum Himmel). Fassbinder slyly updates a 1929 German film, Mother Krausens’ Journey to Happiness—in which a slum-dwelling mother’s world is shattered when her son is arrested—to the Germany of the Economic Miracle. The middle-aged Frau Küsters (Brigitte Mira) is content to contribute to the miracle by putting screws into plugs by the thousands, until the day her gentle husband mysteriously runs amok in the workplace, killing the boss’s son and then himself. In her efforts to have it all make sense, the very lumpen Mother Küsters becomes the naive object of prying reporters and the darling of the Communist Party, at least until the elections. Meanwhile, her sleazy chanteuse daughter (Ingrid Caven) mines the sensational killings for publicity. Beautifully shot and framed to effect both deadpan parody and crisp Brechtian pathos, the film is shown with two endings: the unsparing original, and the American-release “happy ending” that some, including Fassbinder, held to be even more pessimistic.

—Judy Bloch

• Written by Fassbinder, Kurt Raab. Photographed by Michael Ballhaus. With Brigitte Mira, Ingrid Caven, Armin Meier, Irm Hermann. (115 mins, In German with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From Janus Films/Criterion Collection)